faculty scholarship

Posted on by Art Department Faculty Scholarship and Creative Work, News and Events

Ceramics Instructor Eric Ordway is Visiting Artist at College of the Ozarks

Truman’s Ceramicist Eric Ordway recently visited the College of the Ozarks in Point Lookout, MO (just south of Branson). The campus is currently closed to visitors but Dr. Richard Cummings and Professor Michael Ashley found a way for him to still come down and demonstrate his practice to the students.

He writes: “One of the moments that I really enjoy (besides getting to dialogue with their amazing ceramic students) was when I got to see my work installed and lighted in the studio space for the first time. I have been living with this work in my basement and my garage for the last year and it had started to feel under whelming… But when the work was displayed, lighted and given space to breath, it felt like I was able to see the pieces with new eyes. It gave me a sense of pride and confidence to continue making and continue to share my process and my vessels with the wider world.”

Congratulations to Eric Ordway for his beautiful work and impressive show. We are pleased you had a chance to share your work with a new audience!

Posted on by Art Department Art History, Faculty Scholarship and Creative Work, Uncategorized

Professor Josh Hainy Published!

Assistant Professor of Art History Josh Hainy has had an article included in Visualizing the Body in Art, Anatomy, and Medicine Since 1800: Models and Modelling, edited by Andrew Graciano, and published by Routledge.

The article, “Grecian Theory at the Royal Academy: John Flaxman and the Pedagogy of Corporeal Representation,” grows out of research on John Flaxman that was a part of his dissertation at the University of Iowa.

Posted on by Art Department Faculty Scholarship and Creative Work, News and Events, Uncategorized

New Gallery Shows Opening This Week

We have three great exhibitions opening in the University Art Gallery this week.

Retrospective: Wynne Wilbur – in the Main Gallery

Wynne Wilbur, Flower (2017).  Image courtesy of the artist.

View a career-spanning retrospective of work created by Truman ceramics professor Wynne Wilbur.

Emily Nickel, Undoing. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Dreamwork: New Work by ceramicists Leah Bowring, Emily Nickel, and Alexander Thierry – in the Main Gallery

Dreamwork features three ceramic artists, Truman alumni all, who encompass a broad range of approaches to ceramics: Leah Bowring, Emily Nickel, Alexander Thierry. Dreamwork refers to the psychoanalytic concept that our unconscious often disguises truths in our dreams from our conscious mind, but, more broadly, the works in this exhibition address the work the mind undertakes when creating memories, fantasizing, meditating, and dreaming.

Harry Tjutjuna, Wati Nyiru Munu Wati Wanka. Photo courtesy of the University of Virginia.

Claiming Country: Western Desert Painting from the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection – in the Charlyn Gallery (Exhibition on view until March 22).The Western Desert, located in west central Australia, is home to many of Australia’s indigenous communities and is seen as the birthplace of the contemporary Aboriginal art movement. Indigenous Australian art is often based on Dreamings, called Tjukurrpa in the Western Desert region. Dreamings link Aboriginal peoples to their sacred lands, often referred to as Country, through narratives of ancestors and creator beings. Western Desert artists bridge the gap between traditional Aboriginal practices and the contemporary art world by expressing Tjukurrpa in their work through ceremonial iconography and aerial perspectives of sacred landscapes associated with creator beings and ancestors. The paintings in Claiming Country explore the essential role that Country plays in the identities of Indigenous Australians. This exhibition brings together paintings by prominent Western Desert artists Pansy Napangardi, Makinti Napanangka, Weaver Jack, Harry Tjutjuna, Kathleen Petyarre, Tjumpo Tjapanangka, and Paddy Japaljarri Sims.

These works have graciously been loaned to Truman State University from the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia, the only museum outside of Australia dedicated to the exhibition and study of Indigenous Australian art.

Opening reception for all three of these exhibitions will take place Friday, January 25, 6:00-8:00 p.m.

 

Posted on by Art Department Faculty Scholarship and Creative Work, News and Events, Uncategorized

Last Week to See

The fall faculty show, “New Work by Truman State Art Faculty,” in the University Gallery and the Charlyn Gallery (formerly known as the Side Gallery)  will be up through Friday of this week (10/5).  If you haven’t caught the photographs and installation by Priya Kambli in the main gallery and “Grown-Up Games” by Danielle Yakle in the Charlyn Gallery, you are in for a treat.

Above and below, work by Priya Kambli, professor of art.

And below, students Josh Fackler and Josh Fish enjoy Instructor Danielle Yakle’s “Grown-Up Games.”

Posted on by Art Department Faculty Scholarship and Creative Work

Wynne Wilbur is a Resident Artist in Montana

Professor Wynne Wilbur spent time this summer in a short term artist residency at Red Lodge Clay Center in Red Lodge, Montana. While there she worked on porcelain, returning to a material she has focused on during her sabbatical in China and since.

While at Red Lodge, Professor Wilbur was one of five Artist-Invites-Artist residents.  Pictured below are Stephanie Craig (Ohio), Chanda Zea (Oregon), Professor Wilbur, Kyung Hwa Oh (Colorado), and Todd Leech (Ohio) horizontal!

Posted on by Art Department Department, Faculty Scholarship and Creative Work, News and Events, Uncategorized

Professor Aaron Fine to Present on Color Theory

The next Faculty Forum event will take place at 7 p.m. Oct. 24 in Baldwin Hall 102

“Dialogues on Color” will be a presentation of Aaron Fine’s work on color theory resulting in a book of that title. This book, an inter-genre mixture of creative nonfiction, fiction and coloring book pages, is available to read free online, or purchase at cost, at www.arenotbooks.com.

Providing an intellectual history of Western attitudes towards color, the organizing aim of the book is to reveal the ways cultural context shapes our theories of color, not excluding those we link to Newton’s work with the prism and think of as objective and universally true.

For this presentation, Fine will host a mixture of activities, mingling his own lecture style with staged readings done by theatre students in the voices of Newton, Goethe, Tom Sawyer and others. There will also be opportunities for the audience to color in their own color theory coloring book pages and to win a drawing for one of five complimentary copies of the book “Dialogues on Color.”

Posted on by Art Department Art History, Department, Department History, Faculty Scholarship and Creative Work, News and Events, Uncategorized

New Faculty Member: Dr. Josh Hainy

Dr. Josh Hainy in front of the “American Gothic” house in Eldon, IA.

Josh Hainy joined the Truman State University Art Department in August 2017. He received his Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Iowa with a specialization in 18th– and 19th-century European Art. Before the University of Iowa, Hainy attended the University of Oregon, where he got a Master’s degree in Classics. Drawing from his background in the classical languages, for his dissertation in Art History, he examined the ways in which British draughtsman and sculptor John Flaxman (1755-1826) depicted subject matter taken from ancient literature. Flaxman’s drawings of Homer’s Iliad received particular emphasis. These images—done in the contour style of the late 18th and early 19th centuries—became quite popular throughout Europe, but scholarly interest traditionally focused on Flaxman’s use of contour, not the ways in which he presented the narrative of the Iliad through a series of images.

“Ajax Defending the Greek Ships against the Trojans” by John Flaxman.

 

In addition to presenting his research on Flaxman’s narratives at The Art Institute of Chicago Graduate Symposium, Dr. Hainy has presented other papers about Flaxman and his interactions with classical antiquity at the annual conferences of the American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies and the Nineteenth Century Studies Association. He talked about the role of the human body in the lectures Flaxman delivered as the first Professor of Sculpture at the Royal Academy of Art at a symposium about art, anatomy, and medicine held at the Columbia Museum of Art. This paper will be part of an edited volume about art, anatomy, and medicine since c. 1800.

At Truman State this fall, Hainy is teaching “Introduction to the Visual Arts”, the survey of Western Art from the Renaissance to the present, and Renaissance Art in the fall. In the spring he will teach the second half of the western survey, as well as one course on Modern Art and a topics (Art 428) section on art from the 18th and early 19th centuries, titled “Rococo to Romanticism.”

We extend our enthusiastic welcome to Josh Hainy, a valued addition to the Art Department at Truman!

Posted on by Art Department Faculty Scholarship and Creative Work, News and Events, Uncategorized

Professor Derezinski Designs for the Boy Scouts

Matthew Derezinski has been developing promotional materials from print to social media design for the Scouting 500 over the past six months. The Scouting 500 will be held this coming weekend at the Kansas City Speedway. The event is expecting to have over two thousand attendees, including Cub and Boy Scouts, as well as Venturers, Varsity Scouts, Explorers, leaders, family members and friends.

Posted on by Art Department Department, Uncategorized

Design Faculty Road Trip Over Labor Day Weekend

Over the Labor day weekend Design professors Rusty Nelson, Matt Derezinski, and Aaron Neeley took a trip to Detroit, Michigan to see the House Industries Exhibition at the Henry Ford Museum. Known throughout the world for its eclectic font collections and far-reaching creative exploits, House Industries has been a standard-bearer for American graphic design for 25 years. House has worked with a diverse list of collaborators including Jimmy Kimmel, Hermès, The New Yorker, John Mayer, Muji, the Estate of Charles and Ray Eames, and Heath Ceramics.

Posted on by Art Department Department, News and Events, Uncategorized

University Gallery Opening August 29th

Works by Professors Rusty Nelson (left) and Wynne Wilbur (right).

Join us Tuesday, August 29th at 5pm for the Fall 2017 New Work by Truman State Art Faculty show, featuring works from Professors Matt Derezinski, Lindsey Dunnagan, Aaron Neeley, Russell Nelson, and Wynne Wilbur.  The show will be up through the 6th of October.